


Before the Lights Go Out

by TheSoularcher



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2014!verse, Angst, End!verse, Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 05:42:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoularcher/pseuds/TheSoularcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the night before the end of the world, and Cas is stoned. But, this time, not even that can keep him from remembering--not with two Dean Winchesters in the room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Lights Go Out

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Spoilers up to 5x04, mentions of sex, and extreme angst.
> 
> Isn't end!verse just the saddest, greatest 'verse ever?

"Great. Have you got anything that can _find_ Lucifer?"

It's the night before the end of everything, and Cas is stoned. The circumstances would seem relatively normal, more or less, if you ignore the fact that the conversation centered around killing the Devil. But, then again, Dean hasn't really talked about anything else in the past few months. You also had to ignore the fact, Castiel realized, that there were too virtually identical men standing in the same ten-feet radius, the only thing allowing him to differentiate them being their clothing and their general states of dishevelment. But, if it were not for that, it would have been just like any other night.

Dean From the Past turns to answer present-time Dean, who would seem lost in the situation if it were not for the roughness of his voice, the steely anger in his eyes. The anger is commonplace, though. Risa shouldn't take it personally, Cas thinks. He doubts that she will.

"Oh, we were in, uh, Jane's cabin last night," the younger Dean states. Still in the last stages of his pot-induced haze, Cas briefly reconsiders his initial thoughts about the difference between the two Deans in front of him, the two men who are the same but not really; even if his Dean has managed to survive the last five years with relatively few new scars in his face, or prominent wrinkles, there is a massive contrast between them both. The way Dean From the Past, the younger man, has a lopsided smile on his face as he says the words, for instance, even if it's tinged with a note of irony. The easiness in his voice, the relative carefreeness, the way when Cas looks at him, looks him through, he realizes that he's _joking_. Dean From the Past smiles, even if only slightly, and the smile gets to his eyes. And there is light in his eyes, even if only a little bit, and there's innocence in his eyes, even if no one else can see it. Compared to _his_ Dean, with his soldiering stance and the rigidness with which he holds his spine, the permanent scowl tattooed to his face and the steel in his eyes… No matter how much they might seem to be the same person, Cas realizes, they're not. And he'd been dumb even to think so, he scoffs.

He's snapped back into the conversation Dean's voice. Younger Dean. Joking Dean. "And, apparently, we and Risa have a 'connection'." Dean finishes, air quoting with a smile.

And Cas has to smile, too.

Even if it hurts like fuck, despite the pot and its after-effects.

Because it hits him, just in a moment. Quickly, sharply, like a swift blade that's there when it wasn't before, one that he didn't expect. Of course he knew about Risa already, and Jane, and Mia, just as he had known about Shannon and Ellie and Tamara before them, and countless others that Cas didn't really keep track of anymore. And guess what? He was used to it. And he didn't mind. Because if anybody got laid in Camp Chitaqua, it was Castiel. He'd fucked pretty much everyone past legal age who'd ever survived long enough in Camp--men and women, or both at once, take your pick. And what Dean and him had all those months ago? It'd happened, and it'd been great, but it was over, and Cas didn't mind. It didn't matter, not anymore, he told himself, in quiet reassurance; it didn't matter if he didn't think about it, didn't remind himself. He told himself this with a smile.

 

Because Dean had left. Dean had loved him and nestled with him beneath the sheets, curled into his body and kissed him and let Cas breathe him in, let Cas hold him when the world fell to pieces around them; and then he had left him. 

Yes, Dean had left; and Cas had let him go.

Because this life was too punishing and too demanding and too damn _hard_ , and Dean's heart was too battered anyway, his soul too tarnished and his eyes too dim. Because somehow he stopped feeling Cas when they made love; because at some point what they did became just having sex, period, and nothing more. And they used to share a cabin, and they used to huddle beneath the sheets, but then Dean stopped kissing Cas like he used to, stopped looking him in the eyes when they were done. And then he started leaving when it was over, and Cas woke up to an empty bed more often than not, with nothing but the drink on the nightstand and pills on the counter to keep him warm, fill the growing little wormhole in his chest. And Dean never said _I love you_ anymore, nor let Cas hold him, scarcely even talk to him face to face unless they were fighting, and when that happened he said much more than he should. What they had now was just sex, sex in the darkness of Cas's cabin, and then it was over and the gaping hole grew. So Cas drank. And Cas popped pills. And Cas smoked weed, because of course he knew about the girls, of course he know about Shannon and Ellie and Tamara and a few of the others, and because he honestly, _really,_ didn't really want to know. And he pretended not to care until it became too hard to pretend, and he was drowning in the emptiness inside his chest, and he felt like he couldn't take it, not really, not anymore.

One night, after they had cleaned themselves up and Dean was buckling his belt, head facing towards the wall, Cas turned to him wearily. "Does this even matter anymore?", he asked him, quiet. "To you?"

His eyes might've been bloodshot and glazed over, and his voice a little more rasping than usual, his shoulders kind of hunched; and maybe the way he nursed a bottle of whiskey between his hands didn't really help his case. And maybe he was just _tired_. Cas was tired, and scared about Dean answering, and even more scared about him not doing so. 

Dean looked him in the eyes for the first time in a long time, then; really, for once, _looked at him_.

His lips pressed into a thin white line, almost apologetic, only not really. Not really, because it seemed like Dean hardly ever felt anything anymore. Cas's face fell, just a bit, and then he smiled, even if it hurt like fuck, and took a swing from the bottle. Dean left, because the question had been answered, and there was nothing left to say, not really, not anymore. And Cas fell asleep with tears in his eyes, and woke up still drunk and stoned and decided, _heck, why not keep it that way?_ So he did.

It was not two days later when the news from Detroit arrived. Cas was not the one who told him, but he was there still. He was there when the man he loved truly left the building, left to live and talk and coexist with the hard shell that was left behind. He could have pinpointed the moment, the exact moment, when Dean's soul finally cracked under the pressure, broke--he could see it in the soldier's eyes. And Cas only hoped that Dean could look in his and see how absolutely, immensely, _truly_ , sorry he was. How much he wanted to hold him as the world crumbled to pieces. See the sorrow he felt inside.

Dean did. But, by then, it didn't really matter.

Dean never came back to Cas's cabin. To Cas's bed. It was weird, he sometimes thought, when the quietness hung heavy as he turned off the lights at night. _It used to be_ our _bed,_ he thought. He stoned himself a little further when he started thinking things like that, though. They weren't very good things to remind himself about. After all, he'd been the one who stopped fighting, the one who'd given up. He was the one who left Dean walk out that night, just when he needed him the most.

He'd been the one who let him go.

 

And then, right there, after finally allowing himself to remember for the first time in months, to think straight, _goddamit_ … Cas _gets it._ He understands, exactly, what the difference between the both Deans really is. The difference between Dean From the Past, and the Dean that Cas instinctively calls _his_ Dean, even if he isn't his, hasn't been, not for a long time anymore. What struck Cas at the beginning, what led Cas to realize, from the first moment he laid eyes on Dean From the Past, is his _soul_. Cas is not an angel anymore, but he can sense as much. He can sense whether the man he loves--loved, used to love?-- is still in there, somewhere. If he still exists.

When Cas saw Dean From the Past, he saw in him what he'd seen in Dean the first time they made love. Back when they huddled under the sheets and held each other through the darkness, made themselves each other's home. Looking at this Dean, Cas sees light, and hope, and all that makes the man he fell in love with so _Dean Winchester._ He sees a heart that can still feel. A soul that still believes. The man he gave everything- and would be willing to give everything- for.

And, when Cas looks at Dean, _his_ Dean, the only Dean he's ever going to have… he sees none of that. Only steel, and anger, and the aftermaths of war, of hardships no one, _no one_ , should ever have to endure. The hardships Cas let him face alone. 

 

So Cas smiles. Because, when he looks at himself, he sees a soul that's no better. No less tarnished. No less sad. All he sees is a man who has truly, really, lost hope. 

And he smiles, because the end is nigh, and they're all fucked anyway--so why not do smile one last time before the lights go out?


End file.
